Ethiopia

We walked out of our bare rooms at dawn on New Year’s Day 1994, to be greeted by ­hundreds of worshippers, all in white, gathered above the 11 subterranean, 700-year-old churches cut out of red rock in the Ethiopian village of Lalibela. Bearded priests with piercing eyes rocked back and forth over their leathery, palm-sized Bibles, the light streamed through little cross-shaped windows, rainbow umbrellas fluttered above them, and the clouds of frankincense made us feel as if we were in the realm of myth.

When Condé Nast Traveler sent me to Ethiopia—on Christmas Day 1993, no less—the country was just emerging from years of civil war, and few foreigners were visible. On our way to Lalibela, a new Jerusalem, built on Ethiopia’s high plateau for those who could not make the long trip to Palestine, we sometimes drove for hours without seeing a single foreign face. In Lalibela, unquestionably one of the wonders of the world, three intrepid Swiss travelers shared a simple New Year’s Eve meal with me and a friend from high school in a barren dining room.

Nearly everything in Ethiopia had a devotional passion and ­intensity I’ve seen only in Tibet. I remember moments from every second of the trip—the long lines of petitioners in simple robes we saw walking across the empty spaces of the highlands; the people gathered in graveyards on ­Ethiopian Christmas, holding candles and singing hymns; the boat trip to a monastery in Lake Tana, to see its paintings.

But Lalibela was Ethiopia distilled and intensified, and going there felt like stepping into a hand-lettered, illuminated copy of the Book of Kings. ­Pilgrims with names like Abraham and Bethlehem proceeded among the windowless “beehive” cells of nuns; shouting boys played tag along the underground passageways of the chapels; men dressed in purple closed their eyes, hands clenched around golden crosses.

Like many a memorable trip, the journey to Lalibela was not an easy one. We had to drive for several days, often on barely paved roads, to get there. The hulks of tanks from the recent fighting were everywhere. My first day in Ethiopia, I learned that the Somali warlord ­Mohamed ­Aidid, who months earlier had been the world’s most wanted man, was staying in our ­hotel. In Harar, to the east, I ended up in a desert town where the onetime resident and celebrated poet ­Rimbaud was remembered in shops and a café called Rambo.

Yet Lalibela was worth every hardship. I will have been writing for Condé Nast Traveler for 25 years come January (my work first appeared in the fifth ­issue), and while writing dozens of essays from home, I’ve been lucky enough to have been sent by the magazine to Lhasa and La Paz, to Jerusalem and ­Varanasi, to Bhutan and St. Petersburg, to Rio and Bangkok, and to Vietnam and Tierra del Fuego. But if travel is ultimately about ­going to a place from which you’ll never ­entirely come back, then ­Lalibela belongs in a category all its own.

—Pico Iyer, contributing editor, at CNT since 1987

To see Lalibela for yourself, book a trip through travel specialist Cherri Briggs (970-871-0065; exploreafrica.net).

I collect unusual home decor pieces, so when I saw the Autoban Flying Spider chandelier in a British magazine in 2006, I fell in love: How could it be so whimsical and yet so minimalist? I needed it. Bad. That summer I was in Istanbul visiting family, and I found the Autoban design collective’s tiny shop. Autoban hadn’t yet designed the House ­hotels and every hip hangout in Istanbul, and the chandelier I coveted was a prototype that I somehow convinced them to let me buy. But I had to get the three-foot-long ­fixture back to Brooklyn. I stored it in Turkey, returned to the States, and discovered that shipping it would cost more than the thing itself. So I sent my daughter to Istanbul to transport it. When she was stopped by airport customs, she sweetly explained that it was meaningful to her Turkish mother, a homesick expat. And thanks to her teenage ­innocence, the first-ever Autoban chandelier became the most complimented item in our home (autoban212.com; from $745).

–Esin Göknar, photo editor, at CNT since 1997

Photo: Courtesy Autoban

How could anything compare to donning a scratchy little skirt and a pair of wood-soled sandals and being pummeled and scrubbed by a burly Turk who then swaddled me like a baby, spread out towels on a divan, and brought me tea? That was my very authentic experience at the hidden Örücüler Hamam in the grand bazaar. And the whole thing cost about $10.

Step 1: The Scrubbing After a few minutes in the sauna, I wore my skirt into a centuries-old domed room, where several men were undergoing this ritual: Masseurs industriously sloughed off dead skin with a rough sponge and a rich soap.

Step 2: The Rinsing My masseur laid me on a marble slab on the periphery of the room, poured buckets of warm water over me, then pounded my limbs and kneaded my shoulders. Was it serene? No. tension-erasing? Definitely.

Step 3: the tOWeLINg A man wrapped towels around me. I had a strange, sweet flashback to my mom doing that when I was a toddler. Sprawled on a chaise longue, I drank strong, minty tea.

It was early on Fat Tuesday in 2011, and after Dixies at Bud Rip’s (900 Piety St.) and king cake at the Mystic Krewe of Montegut gathering, we heard the Storyville Stompers Brass Band. The surreally costumed Societé de Sainte Anne was beginning its Mardi Gras parade, and we joined in. Amid the shiny post-Katrina repairs, the lingering seven-year-old destruction, and a changed population, the city’s arcane rituals survived: Secret in habit, unrestrained in manner, and unconcerned with reputation outside the Ninth Ward, Sainte Anne marched on.

My husband and I found the gate to Petra open at 5:30 a.m. and snuck in. For an hour, we were the only people around, Indiana Jones–type explorers who had traveled back in time and discovered a lost city. There were no tourists to detract from the ancient Nabatean city’s majesty or to spoil our photos, and this was the perfect time to take pictures: The dawn light brings out the sandstone’s rich colors. By 11 a.m., thousands of tourists were crawling over the site’s every inch. I can’t say that Jim Berkeley, a travel specialist I’ve worked with many times, can get you this experience, but he can plan an ­excellent Jordanian itinerary (800-659-4599; jim@daitravel.com).

–Wendy Perrin, director of consumer news and ­digital community, at CNT since 1989

I’ll never forget summer skiing: schussing down a glacier with a serious Swiss instructor in tow—booked through AER Snowboard & Ski School (41-27-967-70-67; lessons from $227 per person)—and tramping through Sound of Music–style fields, all in the same day. The skiing was slushy, of course, but still beautiful. After a few hours on the slopes, I stripped down to a T-shirt and leggings to do some hiking, and then had a delicious burger at the perfectly rustic mountainside restaurant Chez Vrony (Findeln 3920; 41-27-967-25-52; entrées from $11). It was a lovely and unusual take on a traditional Swiss ski trip.

Two of my friends, amateur pilots from North Carolina, rented a four-seat Cessna in Windhoek, Namibia, and invited me to tag along on a DIY ­safari across Namibia and Botswana. You can charter an aircraft through Wilderness Air (264-61-255-735). In the mornings, we’d fly for a few hours, winging over serpentine rivers and herds of ­elephants, and hop from lodge to lodge. In some small way, we felt that we had earned the pampering at the lodges since we’d arrived on our own steam, sometimes navigating perilous dirt ­landing strips (technically, the pilots did that; I was in charge of snacks). For me, the most memorable parts of the trip were the unplanned pit stops—like a refueling station en route to the Okavango ­Delta, where the “gas jockey” was a woman dressed in her Sunday best (she had just come from church).

Jaipur, India

The diamonds were the size of small hen’s eggs, and there were four long strands of them clasped together. I was wearing $2 million around my neck. “These look good with a T-shirt and jeans,” Gem Palace co-owner Munnu Kasliwal suggested as I stared in addled disbelief at my ­reflection in the mirror. I’ll say.

The table in front of us was strewn casually with countless other private-vault-worthy pieces—the kind of stuff that anywhere but here would not be brought out without a highly visible (and heavily armed) security detail. We’d just walked through rooms where craftsmen sat amid little plastic bags filled with aquamarines, citrines, sapphires, amethysts, rubies, peridots, emeralds, and more, fitting them into rings, earrings, necklaces, bracelets.

I didn’t have $2 million to drop, but I still walked out of Gem Palace—jeweler to maharajas and royals from around the world since 1852 and a must-stop on any Indian trip—with not just a lesson in the craft and culture of fine Indian jewelry-making but also plenty of consolation prizes. A blue topaz ring in 24-karat brushed gold, along with matching earrings and three pairs of chandelier earrings, set me back just a few hundred dollars each. And if nothing suits perfectly in the downstairs shop of ready-made pieces, you can pick your stone and choose a setting (matte or shiny, thin or thick, rounded or oval) and collect the finished product a few hours later, all tied up in the Gem Palace’s signature little maroon cloth bag—it’s India’s answer to Tiffany blue (M. I. Rd.; 91-141-237-4175).

On a trip to Isla Mujeres, my then-wife and I took a boat ride to Isla Contoy, a nature reserve about 14 miles away. Captain Tony’s Tours’ small boat held only us and another couple, along with the captain and his mate. The mate threw a hooked fishing line over the edge of the boat while the ­captain mixed a rum cocktail in an old plastic bottle and passed it around. As we approached the coast, the mate reeled in the fishing line and showed us a large silvery barracuda—it would be our lunch. We explored the island, spotting iguanas and various birds, and then came back to shore to eat the fish, which was perfectly grilled, incredibly tasty, and served with sides of rice, beans, and plantains (along with more rum cocktails, of course). Gathered around a sun-bleached log on a white sand beach, gazing out at the still blue waters of the Caribbean, we’d never felt luckier (52-998-877-0229; day-trip, $60 per person).

Most people book the two-day itinerary from Luang Prabang in Laos to Huay Xai, on the Thai border, as a downstream trip (because it’s faster), but you’ll be grateful you reversed the order when you pass the jammed boats heading in the opposite direction. You’ll likely be the only passenger, which means you’ll have the tribal village stops—not to mention Mekong Cruises’ just-spicy-enough meals along the way—all to yourself (luangsay.com; two-day cruise, including an overnight at the Luang Say Lodge, $375).

A perfect meal of oysters and ice-cold burgundy at Port de Larros, in Gujan-Mestras, was the holy grail of a trip that took my husband and me from Paris to Bordeaux to Biarritz and then up the coast. I had been eating Bernard Delis’s oysters for decades at a wine bar in Paris called Le Baron Rouge (1 rue Théophile Roussel; 33-1-43-43-14-32; oysters from $11), but I wanted to see the home of the eight ­generations of oyster farmers who harvested them. We picked up oysters from Delis’s shack (Port de Larros; 33-6-14-60-54-93), then ate on a blanket spread over the sand of the ethereal Dune du Pilat.

–Ondine Cohane, ­contributing editor, at CNT since 1998

Photo: Bela Borsodi/ Trunk Archive

My experiences of Provence were mainly of the bed-and-breakfast and baguette-for-lunch variety, but my eight-day, greatest hits tour was a little different. There was the lavender-scented, fleur-de-lis-sprigged accommodation—Aix-en-Provence’s Villa Gallici has a spot on my favorite-hotels-of-all-time list (33-4-42-23-29-23; doubles from $476)—and the food, like bouillabaisse with a Mediterranean view, a daily slab of foie gras, and an oozing plate of cheese at Le Bistrot du Paradou, near Avignon (57 ave. de la Vallée des Baux; 33-4-90-54-32-70; prix-fixe lunch, from $55). And then there were the exclusive experiences travel specialist Jill Jergel had arranged: a private tour of papal Avignon, a chef’s table that morphed into an amicable épée fight, a Châteauneuf-du-Pape tasting. It was total immersion in the richesse of Provence, pure plaisir from beginning to end. My best friend, Eloise, who had joined me from London, summed it up best when she remarked as we drifted over Haute Provence in a hot-air balloon one morning: “This is like our honeymoon” (800-245-1950; jjergel@frontiers​travel.com).

Italy

About ten years ago, on a warm spring night in Sicily, with the scent of orange blossom in the air, I found myself sitting down to a dinner straight out of the pages of The Leopard, prepared by the last monzù. Perhaps I should explain. Obsessed with Sicily ever since I discovered Giuseppe di Lampedusa’s iconic novel, I had signed up to take a cooking class at an estate named Regaleali, owned by Anna Tasca Lanza, the queen of Sicilian cuisine. ­Every morning, we six students would meet in our teacher’s kitchen and make lunch: arancini (rice and chickpea fritters) with sarde a beccafico (fresh sardines, stuffed and rolled up), or pasta con ­acciughe e ­mollica (pasta with anchovies and bread crumbs).

But on our last day, Anna announced that she had a surprise for us. That night her father’s old chef, ­Mario lo ­Menzo—who had been with her family for 50 years and was known as the last monzù—was coming to cook dinner. Monzù? An ­honorific given to master chefs, it’s a Sicilian bastardization of monsieur. Lo Menzo had been trained in the French tradition, like every chef who had worked for the Sicilian aristocracy for the past 200 years, but he was the only one still cooking. Forget the Mediterranean diet; this was Versailles by way of Carême—pâté de foie gras, lamb fricassee with a creamy sauce, followed by a tottering pyramid of profiteroles—and truly a meal fit for the Prince of ­Salina, a.k.a. The Leopard (39-0934-815-621; $1,266 per person for three nights, ­including meals and classes).

One hot Brazilian night, I headed out by myself at about 11 to a dance hall called Democráticus to see what this samba thing was about. I walked up the marble staircase of an elegant, if dilapidated, nineteenth-century mansion to find a mostly empty vaulted hall with ceiling fans pushing around the humid air. I sat down and ordered a drink. One by one, musicians began filing in, carrying trumpets, guitars, trombones. By 11:30, the customers started to arrive. The band, now 12 strong, started up with a raucous samba tune. Couples shot to the floor: old married folks in baggy suits and dresses, Casanovas in bebop suits and white shoes and their heavily made-up sweethearts in tight skirts, hipsters in jeans and high-top sneakers and miniskirts. Everybody, all ages, swung their hips, stomped their feet, spun, and lunged. They just danced and danced and danced—and so did I, until 3 a.m. (Rua do Riachuelo 91, Lapa; 55-21-2252-4611).

Interred together 4,300 years ago in a single rock–cut tomb, the two “Overseers of Manicurists of the Palace” of the pharaoh were either twin brothers or very intimate colleagues. In this tomb, exquisite relief carvings memorialize scenes from a beautiful friendship: Two young men go fowling in the marshes, hunt desert ibex, spearfish for giant Nile perch, and, unusually for pharaonic iconography, repeatedly and tenderly embrace. The tomb, which is often skipped by tour guides, shows that the pair shared an appetite for pleasure in eternity as they did in life. “A thousand of every good thing every day,” reads a hieroglyphic inscription describing the funeral offerings (tickets at the booth next to the Step Pyramid of Djoser).